Crack Defeat: Difference between revisions

 

A character is in a competition of some sort, and is clearly the best of the competition (in the eyes of the viewer and the other characters). The character ends up losing, however, to an obviously inferior work. Often used to effect the [[Status Quo Game Show]] trope, while still showing how good the character is at what s/he does.

 

Related to [[Dark Horse Victory]], [[Ironic Inversion]], [[Dude, Where's My Reward?]], [[Shaggy Dog Story]]. A common victim of [[One Judge to Rule Them All]].

 

 

* In the ''[[Good Eats]]'' episode ''Scrap Iron Chef'', despite much cheating on both sides and Alton being the obvious winner (the judges praised his cooking and called the Scrap Iron Chef's food crap), the Scrap Iron Chef won anyway. This is certainly a jab at the ''[[Iron Chef]]'' series, where the Iron Chefs always seem to win.

* This kicks off the plot of a ''[[Kamen Rider Double]]'' story arc. Shotaro's [[Joshikousei]] informants Queen and Elizabeth enter an ''[[American Idol]]''-style singing contest, and do well in their first two weeks<ref>Bearing in mind that the girls are played by members of [[AKB48]]</ref>. In the third week, they come up against a guy [[Brown Note|whose singing is so terrible it knocks birds out of the sky and causes earthquakes]], but the judges absolutely adore him. Naturally the girls are suspicious, so they hire Shotaro to investigate. {{spoiler|No points for guessing that a Dopant is involved, but not in the way it might seem.}}

 

 

* In one of ''[[The Simpsons (Comic Book)|The Simpsons]]'' comic books, the school has a art competition. Everyone turns out something, and some of them are pretty good. The winner, however, is Bart who submitted a blank easel still in its packaging. He claimed that he was 'Drawing a blank', and the art critic who was judging the competition loved it.

 

 

* ''The Hurricane'' opens up with Rubin Carter finishing a fight against Joey Giardello and inexplicably losing even though Giardello hardly seems able to stand up. Interestingly, this isn't how the fight actually happened- Giardello sued the filmmakers for libel, angrily claiming that he won the fight fair and square.

* In ''Hot Dog: The Movie'', Harkin Banks is a newcomer to the world of competitive skiing, and delivers clearly the best skiing of anyone. But he is given far worse scores than his snobby rival, Rudi Garmisch, who admittedly delivers excellent skiing, but who is given top scores so he can continue to attract money and fame to the ski lodge.

 

 

* In ''[[Bob and George]]'', the robot Ran Cossack's backstory is that Kalinka Cossack built him for a [[Science Fair]]. They lost to a giant model volcano.

* In ''[[Gastrophobia]]'', Phobia and Klepto have a [[Cooking Duel|cooking match]] to prove who's the better cook. Phobia makes [[Cordon Bleugh Chef|squirrel-bacon applesauce.]] Klepto ''[[Anachronism Stew|invents]]'' apple pie. Phobia wins by default because Klepto is just a slave.

 

 

* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'':

** The above example also contains a weird double subversion, as the winner of that science fair was a girl with an impressive set of self-made, [[Spider-Man|Doc Ock-style]] [[Artificial Limb|mechanical arms]]... that she used to build her ''real'' project, [[Mundane Utility|a baking soda volcano.]]

 

 

* When developing a [[Fighting Game]], beginners being able to beat experts is widely seen as '''''the''''' thing to avoid at all costs, sometimes regardless of how well-made the rest of the game is.

** However, [[Fridge Brilliance]] if you've gotten the [[Golden Ending]]: {{spoiler|maybe he managed to synthesize the Cosmic Conis?}}

 

 

* In the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Roy Jones Jr. pummeled Park Si Hun in the final, landing 86 punches to Park's 32. But after the bout, the judges gave Park a 3-2 win, and an ill-deserved gold medal. Jones would later go on to become a famous pro boxer.

 

 

 

* ''[[King of the Hill]]'': After having a heart attack, the boss of the propane company Hank Hill works at asks Hank to "take care of my dogs", and he thinks that boss is metaphorically telling him to take care of the company, so he accepts the job. Turns out boss literally does mean to take care of his dogs, while some other guy is taking charge of the company and putting "tattleboxes" in the propane delivery trucks, which royally pisses off the drivers and ruins productivity.

* Straddling on the fence... ''[[Rugrats]]'', "Moving Away": Angelica Pickles' mom Charlotte has packed her bags, and is ready to move (with Angelica and hubby Drew) cross-country to New York to be the new Vice President of her company. After Angelica recounts with the rest of the Rugrats on how they met in the first place, Charlotte's plans have hit one major snag: her assistant, Jonathan has taken the job ahead of his apparent superior. "There's no loyalty in this town!"

 

 

* In the NES game ''[[Punch-Out!!]]'', you better KO your opponent in the title bouts, or else the judges will always vote for the other guy. Mr. Sandman must also be KOed even though he isn't a circuit champion. You can win on points in other matches, though it takes a ludicrous amount.

 

 

* ''[[The Torkelsons]]'': Dorothy Jane Torkelson is in the finals of a contest whose winner will get to be a foreign exchange student in Paris. Her family situation gets high marks, and the judges do seem to like her... but still loses anyway because the family in France wanted a boy. Thus making the finals [[Shaggy Dog Story|completely meaningless]] since there was only one boy out of the three finalists.

** [[One Judge to Rule Them All]] (''[[The Apprentice]]'', ''[[Hell's Kitchen|Hells Kitchen]]''): Players have been awesome businessmen, chefs, or whatever; but as soon as they pissed off the judge they didn't have a prayer.

 

 

* ''[[Kim Possible]]'', "Hidden Talent": In yet another hybrid of Crack Defeat and [[Dark Horse Victory]], Ron stalls for Kim (who is trying to escape an especially elaborate death trap) in the school talent show with an eclectic (and exhaustive) list of vaudeville acts (e.g., ventriloquism, breaking bricks with his head), and ends up winning first place over Kim and Bonnie's big, flashy acts (Bonnie dances ballet, while KP performs "Say the Word", a song by Christy Romano, her voice actress). Barkin proclaims, "Proving that quantity is indeed better than quality".

* In an episode of ''[[Pepper Ann]]'', the eponymous character completely wins over the judges of a beauty pageant with her heartfelt speech about being herself... but another girl wins because the entire pageant was rigged to give her the prize -- she's the daughter of the president of the company that organized it.

 

 

* The ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' arc "Torg Potter and the Sorcerer's Nuts" does this as a direct parody of the "last minute points" scene in the first ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' film/book. House Wunnybun (the equivalent of Slytherin) has won the house cup with 534 points, while House Snackewyrm (the equivalent of Gryffindor) comes in last with minus a billion. At the awards ceremony, headmaster Gandledorf announces that's he's granting his Snackewyrm niece a trillion points for [http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=020923 "being so gosh darn cute,"] making Snackewyrm the winner instead. He later confides to Torg that he just didn't want to mess up his paperwork by treating Wunnybun with respect.

 

 

* In ''[[Stick It]]'', one of the gymnasts performs a difficult vault with impeccable skill, but loses points because of a technicality: her ''bra strap'' was showing. As she herself points out, the judges were overtly biased against her coach and were exploiting this rule as a covert mean of revenge. This event causes the rebellion that makes up the remainder of the film, and is apparently a problem [[Truth in Television|in real life]]; in actual gymnastic competitions the complex rules and unnecessary penalties confuse viewers and allow judges to deliberately alter the outcome.

** {{spoiler|By film's end, Dewey suffers what he feels is a [[Crack Defeat]] at a band contest, at the hands of the very band that kicked him out at the film's start. [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|Until his band gets a call for an encore.]]}}

 

 

* Obligatory ''[[Discworld]]'' example: At the end of ''[[Discworld/Maskerade|Maskerade]]'', Agnes's annoying and tone-deaf roommate Christine is the one who looks forward to a brilliant future as a diva while Agnes, who actually did all the singing every time Christine appeared onstage, is shunted off to one side. The stage manager {{spoiler|Walter Plinge}} tells her that yes, she was very good, better than Christine will ever be even after years of training - but Christine is naturally a star, which in the opera world is more important than being talented.

** Also noteworthy in that both the audience response ''and'' the AI computer analysis had Clef as the winner. However, they only get to submit ''advisory'' opinions; the judges' vote is binding.

 

 

* In ''[[Breath of Fire]] 2'', Petape hits upon the idea of flushing out the impostor pretending to be her brother Tapeta by holding a cooking contest. For all his [[Cloudcuckoolander]] tendencies, Tapeta is a superb chef, and Petape suspects rightly that he will easily beat the impostor, especially with the high-quality ingredients the party obtains from [[Let's Meet the Meat|the powerful insect monsters]] lurking in the castle's basement. While the head chef gives high marks to the impostor's dishes, he's positively ''ecstatic'' about Tapeta's - but each time, he finds some nit-picky reason to deduct points. This comes to a head when the chef comes to a dessert made using only [[Foreign Queasine|the most rare and exquisite fly in existence]] and Petape calls him out. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the impostor has rigged the vote.